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Please join the Interfaith Coalition of Greater Utica for the next screening in the Interfilm series.

A smiling, effervescent teenager, Dalya is the focus of this documentary, which tells the remarkable story of a family displaced by the Syrian conflict and explores a young life caught between highly politicized identities. Dalya comes across as an ordinary Southern California teenager. She takes selfies and goes to prom. She plays sports and hangs out at the mall. She is also the only student at her Catholic high school who wears a hijab. Starting in 2013, the film follows Dalya and her mother through what seems at first a typical immigration experience. They adjust to unfamiliar American ways, even as they maintain the cultural and religious traditions that sustain them. However, they grow tense and anxious as the 2016 presidential campaign unfolds and candidate Donald Trump calls for restrictions on Muslim immigrants.

Interfaith/Interfilm is a film series co-sponsored by Hamilton College and the Interfaith Coalition of Greater Utica and hosted at Munson-Williams-Proctor Art Institute. The springtime series aims to create a productive, safe space to experience and discuss the confluences and clashes of religious traditions and to create a public forum for thinking about the place of religion in public life today. This is particularly important in a city such as Utica, which has seen wave after wave of immigrant communities settle in, bringing their own religious traditions and sacred spaces, and thus establishing a uniquely diverse religious community.

All films will be held on the last Tuesday of the month at 6:30 p.m. from February through May and are free and open to the public. Each screening will be followed by a brief response by a member of a local religious community, offering leading suggestions and questions about the religious implications of the film. This will be followed by an open conversation among audience members.